classic poetry

When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d

When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.

O powerful, western, fallen star!
O shades of night! O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d! O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud, that will not free my soul!

In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle……and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig, with its flower, I break.

 Walt Whitman

Laocoön
I was undoubtedly once upon a time an archaic statue; I remember that I smiled but not why. I walked up King’s Street and laughed, just out of college. This was without cause or perhaps only because I was early. I remember that I held a pair of reins which presently no longer existed, that I was of marble or bronze, that I was thrown flat on my back and lay there smiling at my lying there smiling, that dirt fell over my smile so that it became ever more a smile in itself, whether this came to pass through an earthquake or in a barbarstorm .I smiled and fell and fell and smiled. Thus did I go through various stages: became faun and nymph and  gauvner and crone and hellenistic sovereign and various gods and at last Laocoon writhing under the snakes’ strangle-tries and with limbs which were equally serpents themselves. As for my sons, they were only smaller versions of myself.

At first they admired this group but later were of the opinion that it was poor and eventually considered it established that at best I was created around the year 100 after Christ during a period of decline.
But what they did not think of was that I writhed and suffered nonetheless and that it made no difference whether I was made at an earlier or later period and whether I smiled or curled my mouth in pain and conflict. For everything belongs to the beginning. I am a kouros who has become a Laocoon, and smiling or suffering is real whether good or bad and whether one lives 500 years before or 1800 years after oneself. I am then Laocoon and I writhe constantly , in a questionable original as well as in a multitude of plaster casts, and that is as much fate and death as constantly to smile.
O you who walk by, burn me to quicklime if I am marble, put me in packing with a double lining if I am plaster, or scatter dirt and ruins over me that I may smile or writhe in peace.

Gunnar Ekelöf

La Lluvia

No, que la reina no reconozca
tu rostro, es más dulce
así, amor mío, lejos de las efigies, el peso
de tu cabellera en mis manos, recuerdas
el árbol de Mangareva cuyas flores caían  
sobre tu pelo? Estos dedos no se parecen
a los pétalos blancos: míralos, son como raíces,
son como tallos de piedra sobre los que resbala
el lagarto. No temas, esperemos que caiga la
lluvia, desnudos,
la lluvia, la misma que cae sobre Manu Tara.
 
 
Pero así como el agua endurece sus rasgos en la
piedra,
sobre nosotros cae llevándonos suavemente
hacia la oscuridad, más abajo del agujero
de Ranu Raraku. Por eso
que no te divise el pescador ni el cántaro.
Sepulta
tus pechos de quemadura gemela en mi boca,
y que tu cabellera sea una pequeña noche mía,
una oscuridad cuyo perfume mojado me cubre.
 
 
De noche sueño que tú y yo somos dos plantas
que se elevaron juntas, con raíces enredadas,
y que tú conoces la tierra y la lluvia como mi
boca,
porque de tierra y de lluvia estamos hechos.
A veces
pienso que con la muerte dormiremos abajo,
en la profundidad de los pies de la efigie,
mirando
el Océano que nos trajo a construir y a amar.
 
 
Mis manos no eran férreas cuando te conocieron, las
aguas
de otro mar las pasaban como a una red; ahora
agua y piedras sostienen semillas y secretos.
Ámame dormida y desnuda, que en la orilla
eres como la isla: tu amor confuso, tu amor
asombrado, escondido en la cavidad de los sueños,
es como el movimiento del mar que nos rodea.
 
 

Y cuando yo también vaya durmiéndome
en tu amor, desnudo,
deja mi mano entre tus pechos para que palpite
al mismo tiempo que tus pezones mojados en
la lluvia
 
 
 
 
 
 
Pablo Neruda

My Star        

All, that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

 

 

 

 

 Robert Browning

Si no fuera

Si no fuera porque tus ojos tienen color de luna,
de día con arcilla, con trabajo, con fuego,
y aprisionada tienes la agilidad del aire,
si no fuera porque eres una semana de ámbar,
si no fuera porque eres el momento amarillo
en que el otoño sube por las enredaderas
y eres aún el pan que la luna fragante
elabora paseando su harina por el cielo,
oh, bienamada, yo no te amaría!
En tu abrazo yo abrazo lo que existe,
la arena, el tiempo, el árbol de la lluvia,
y todo vive para que yo viva:
sin ir tan lejos puedo verlo todo:
veo en tu vida todo lo viviente.
 
 
 
 
 
Pablo Neruda